Like many of you, I've been reading about the homeless crisis that unfolded in many of our large metro areas. Portland, OR, New York City, etc. Even my hometown of Alexandria, LA has a homeless problem, but not to the extent of other metro areas. I've been thinking about what we could do to help solve this problem.
It returns to economics. In my hometown, we have something called the Central Louisiana Homeless Coalition that seems to be some sort of quasi-governmental agency to deal with the problem. In Portland, OR, there is something called the Joint Office of Homeless Services, and even in New Orleans, there is an office in the Community Development department to deal with it. These are just three examples. So, along wit the unfortunate homeless, we have people on the public payroll that are supposed to deal with that problem. There are people on the payroll who need the homeless so that they can continue to draw a paycheck. If the problem goes away, there is no reason to pay these people.
There is a truism in conservative economics that if you subsidize something, you get more of it. The simple answer is to quit subsidizing it. Defund those offices and transfer the government workers to another acency like Waste Water or Public Sanitation where they might be useful.
I notice, simply by looking around that we don't have a homeless problem in rural areas. The land is privately owned, and we don't tolerate it. I'm just sayin'.
4 comments:
Bureaucracy breeds more of itself. Concur on the defunding!
A long time ago in the small town where I was farming we had two neighbor sisters both got pregnant in the same year. Their single mother worked as a cleaning lady at the local hospital. The father of one of the kids died of leukemia and the other father left for the military. The older sister was in nurse training and the younger sister was caring for both kids while still in highschool. Grand ma applied for food stamps to free up child care money during school hours. The social worker said she made something like $10 too much to qualify for food stamps but both sisters could quit school and they would qualify for aid including an apartment each and food stamps! We baby sat free, these two fit in fine with our young family and younger sister graduated and was also prom Queen that year and our five year old daughter prom princess. True story, talking about self serving buerocrats!!
Defund the bureaucracies and enforce the vagrancy laws with time on a work farm. Hand-cutting weeds along the roadways sounds like an nice boring job out in the sun all day. Give them 90 days with no time off, and if you don't work, you get minimum food and no vegan/kosher/halal/other options other than for actual allergies.
You nailed it. When the paycheck depends on the problem, you can bet it will never get solved.
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